


I Like Your Cats

by madrastic



Category: Original Work, Weak Constitution: Common Cat
Genre: Animal Death, Character Study, Gen, Magic, Necromancy, Original Character(s), Trans Male Character, coffee shops!, kinda? does it count if it's bones?, no editing we die like men, skeleton cats are babies, teen for languge
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-17
Updated: 2019-06-05
Packaged: 2020-03-07 01:09:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 10,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18862684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madrastic/pseuds/madrastic
Summary: A necromancer having a silent sleep-deprivation fueled mental breakdown in a coffee shop ends up meeting someone willing to give them a hand. Their cat approves. So do their calculations.





	1. We Met In A Coffee Shop

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Awkward_Dragon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Awkward_Dragon/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Weak Constitution: Common Cat](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17302013) by [Awkward_Dragon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Awkward_Dragon/pseuds/Awkward_Dragon). 



> This is set in the universe of Weak Constitution: Common Cat! Thank you so much Awkward_Dragon for letting me ask you way too many questions <3 I hope you like it! This was all written in one big burst at 3 am and I never looked back, enjoy, chapter 2 being written as we speak.

They were sitting in the café. Where else would they be? There was an issue in the ritual, and they needed fresh sounds, fresh sights, fresh air, and fresh food to solve it. Plus, the cats were scratching at the door, and they would want a walk anyway.

Ankh was curled up on the table next to them, they had smushed together two tables for all of their notebooks, idly watching his owner have a slight mental breakdown over a mistake they could _feel_ , resting his head on his front paws. He chirped quietly as the waitress approached, giving him a pat on the head, scratching at the bone between his soft, cartilage ears.

“Beck?” She set down a glass of water in front of them and a bowl of chicken in front of Ankh. Ankh happily started eating, skeletal jaws snapping shut on non-skeletal chicken. “Everything okay?”

Beck looked up at the waitress, tired out of their mind. “What?”

“Have… have you slept recently?” She glanced at the empty coffee cups that surrounded Beck.

“This week? Yeah. There’s a mistake in the formula.” Beck looked haggard, hair messy from hands being run through it idly, large dark circles under their eyes. “You know you can call me Lies, right? It’s not, like, an overstep of boundaries or anything, we’re friends.”

“Okay, Be-Lies, okay. Promise me you’ll get some sleep?”

"Sure thing, Symph. Once I figure this out.” Beck looked down, attention summoned by another skeleton cat, pressing its paws into their thigh. It meowed quietly. Beck smiled, giving it a scritch on the chin. “Want some chicken, huh Nebby? Want a snack?”

Nebby meowed again, jumping into Beck’s lap. Beck took some chicken from the bowl and offered it to the cat. Nebby’s tail stood up happily as it ate. Symph smiled.

“Nebuchadnezzar is coming along nicely.” She petted the happy skeleton kitty. “You think you’ll go for something other than cats next time?”

“I like cats!”

“I’m not saying cats are bad, maybe just a change of pace?”

"I know how to take care of cats, though.”

Symph paused, a thought coming into her mind. “What if you put something else into a cat’s body?”

"Species swapping?”

“Yeah!”

Beck smiled. “That’s actually what I’m doing now. Well. Kinda. I’m trying to figure out which incense brings which animals into certain bodies. I’ve got the formula for _cats_. I’m trying to put a dog in a rat.”

“Sounds… unorthodox? Have you had any success?”

Beck took a sip of water. “Kind of. It’s weird and messy, but, if I can figure out what the shit went wrong, then I’ve got some real promise. Hey, could I have another coffee?”

“I’m cutting you off.”

Beck looked genuinely upset. “Aw, Symphony! Please? Just one more? And then I’ll go to bed. Promise.”

Symph rolled her eyes. “Fine. _One_. And then you go back to your skull cave and sleep.”

Beck gave her a wide smile. “Thank you!”

Symph smiled back, giving the kitties one last pet before going back to fulfill Beck’s mission of caffeine. Nebby jumped out of their lap, following Symph, leaping onto the counter and loudly meowing for attention. Symph obliged it, giving it a scratch on its vertebrae.

Beck turned back to their books, resisting Ankh’s attempts to distract them as he crawled into their lap, studying their papers. Beck barely noticed the man who entered, his nice, clean blue robes, or his steady, clever eyes. He did, however, see Beck, and the cacophony of scribblings and papers they had caged themselves in. He approached, knocking on the table. Beck flinched, looking up at his bright, too-blue eyes.

“What?” Beck’s tone had no love lost.

He was all charm as he replied. “Curiosity got the better of me, my apologies. Allow me to introduce myself. I am Adamantine, and I am an illusion mage.” His voice was smooth, perfect in all the right ways.

Beck was not amused. “Beck Lyza. Beck to strangers. And family sometimes.”

“Enchanted to make your acquaintance, may I take a seat?” He was already pulling up a chair.

Ankh looked up, fixing his eye sockets onto Adamantine. Adamantine stared back, slightly unnerved by the hairless, skinless, fleshless thing looking at him. He cleared is throat as Beck’s hand calmly stroked the vertebrae of Ankh’s back.

“Nice, uh, cat?” Adamantine smiled at Ankh, offering a hand.

Ankh climbed out of Beck’s lap, paws crinkling on the notebooks, and sniffed Adamantine’s hand. Adamantine reached over to pet Ankh’s ears, and Ankh allowed it, tilting his head to get a better angle.

“His name’s Ankh.” Beck gently lifted one of his paws to get the notebook under it. “Surprised he likes you. Not big on strangers, aren’t you, huh? Aren’t you!” The last bit was cooed as Beck ran their hand along Ankh’s tail.

Ankh pulled away from Adamantine’s hand and turned to face them, putting a front paw on their shoulder, looking as much a disappointed father as a skeleton cat could.

Beck gave his chin a kiss. “Yeah, yeah. I got it. Love you too, little demon baby.”

Ankh meowed, climbing across Beck’s shoulders to get at his favorite napping spot. He laid down, curling up and settling himself. He reached out with a paw to grab at Beck’s papers before being distracted by Symph, arriving with Beck’s coffee, knowing smile on her face. She gave Ankh’s skull a ruffle.

“Time out then, go ahead, sweetie.” Beck reached a hand to stroke Ankh’s ears, teasing a satisfied purr out of the cat, taking the coffee from Symph. “Thank you _sooooo_ much!”

“Last one.” Symph warned, going back to her counter, making sure Nebby didn’t mess anything up in the time she was gone.

Beck turned to Adamantine. “Ankh isn’t partial to strangers.”

“Oh, uh, okay.” Adamantine hadn’t expected his day to take this turn. “What are you working on?” He looked down at the notebooks, paling when he realized what he was seeing.

“Nothing you can help me with.” Beck closed the notebook in their hand, dropping it back into their bag.

“You’re…” Adamantine looked harder at the page in front of him.

“A necro, yep. These are my cats. Woo hoo. You finally met one.” They looked supremely unamused as Nebuchadnezzar approached, carrying his leash in his mouth.

“No, no, it’s not that. Cute kitties, though. Your numbers are wrong. You did the conversion weird here.” Adamantine pointed at some numbers scratched into the margins. “You should’ve divided by seven, not eight.”

Beck looked at the sheet themselves, and their eyes widened. “Wait, fuck. You’re right.” They grabbed a pencil and did the new math. “Wait, wait. Fucking shit. Yes. I think that was the fuck up.” Beck looks up at Adamantine, eyes wild. Adamantine looks back, just as excited.

Beck grabbed their books, shoving them into their bag. “Gotta run, new experiment.”

“You mean sleep?” Symph called, folding her arms.

“That too. Adamantine the Illusion Mage, swing by the grad student tower in oh, say, 5 hours? I’m doing a little thing and need an extra set of hands.” Beck took Nebuchadnezzar’s leash in their hand.

“Wait, you’re a grad student?”

“Yeah? What, are you not in?”

“Can I use you as a reference for future jobs and shit?”

“Sure, why the fuck not.”

“Then ok, sure.”

“Great.” Beck slung their bag over their shoulder and started out the door. “By Symph! See you soon!”

“Better be rested.”

“You know I won’t! Oh! Adamantine. Ask for Lies when you get there. They’ll know what you mean. See ya!”

And with that, Beck was gone in a flurry of rattling bones, papers, and excitement. Adamantine turned to look at Symph, placing his books down on the newly vacated table.

“Are they usually that…” Adamantine strummed his fingers through the air, looking for the right word.

“Excitable? Yeah. They like their work.” The chimera hopped into the counter, seeking affection under Symph’s hand. She humored it, giving it a scratch behind its ears. “I’m Symphony, by the way, and you might want to read up on necromancy if Lies takes such a shining to you.”


	2. Rituals and Rats

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Adamantine fulfills his promise to help out. Beck just wants to know how to make spells reliably work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello again, by good bois! This was also written at 2 AM. We finally get to see some ~magic~! I hope yall enjoy this as much as I did writing it! I ended up accidentally starting a 3rd chapter, so here's hoping I actually dig the forks out of my back to finish it

Adamantine found himself outside of a large tower, five hours later, in practical robes and with books on the basics of necromancy. He looked up the imposing tower, steeling his nerves, before entering in through the doors. It was surprisingly busy for 8 in the evening, people bustling to and fro, making sure that all that needed to be done was completed. There was an information booth, thankfully, situated unobtrusively in a corner of the lobby. Adamantine made his way there, grabbing the attention of the person behind it. They were dressed in plain robes, long brown hair braided down their left shoulder. They stared at him under overgrown bangs, eyes unimpressed, chewing gum.

“Yes, how may I help you?” There was an edge in their tone, almost a dare.

“Um, I was looking for Beck? They asked me to come here?” Adamantine put on his best grin, leaning his forearm on the counter.

The person didn’t look very enamored with him. “Beck?”

“Yeah? They’re a grad student here?” Adamantine felt himself losing steam, begging for some kind of positive reaction.

“So is everyone else. Do you have a physical description.” They popped the gum they were chewing.

“Oh, uh, they have black robes—” The person raised one eyebrow, “—and they have short dark hair with a grey stripe in the front? Oh, and two skeleton cats.”

“You mean Lies? You should’ve started with the skeleton cats. 5th floor, staircase is to your right, up that and the sixth door on the left. Their name’s on it. Mine’s Laudie by the way. Tell them I say ‘hey’ and to return my books.”

“Thank you so much! I will! Oh, I’m Adamantine.” Adamantine smiled again, trying his best to stride away. Laudie looked almost amused.

He found the staircase easily, reaching the 5th floor with some slight exertion, only cursing the lack of a lift when he was north of the third floor. When he finally reached the top, Adamantine was greeted with a long, winding hallway, lined with doors. He found a large black door with “Beck A. Lyza” on it, with a few notes from colleagues and friends written on parchment taped to it, halfway down the hall. He knocked and heard a reply from inside.

“On it! On it!” Beck’s voice was less raspy than before, devoid of the bleary half-slur of exhaustion. They opened the door, and, upon seeing Adamantine, brightened. “Oh, hey!”

“Hi.” Adamantine did his best not to stare at the embroidered robes, teeth lining the sleeves and a skull sitting at their chest, eyes stitched into the hood, heavy black fabric hiding their form.

“Nice robes.” Beck looked down at themselves.

“Oh. That. Right. They’re from forever ago, we were trying to figure out if decorated robes help in spells.” They let one hand stray over the sleeves, feeling the strands making up the teeth under their fingertips.

Adamantine frowned, confused. “Do they?”

“No, not really. Fun to wear, though, and keep my other robes from getting stained. C’mon in. I was just getting ready.” They moved to let Adamantine in, holding the door open.

He looked around, letting his eyes drift around the rooms. There was a desk in this one, stacked high with papers and books, a scratching post at the far wall. The wallpaper was a dark red, and anatomical diagram of various animals, including human, were hung all around. There were two doors, one closed and the other open. Through the open door, Adamantine could see a summoning circle, as well as a rat skeleton, lying in the center, perfectly articulated, as well as a messy desk and shelves on the walls, holding various wooden boxes. He could smell an incense he couldn’t identify burning.

“Sorry if it’s a bit scent-heavy, I haven’t had a chance to let it fully air out form last time.” They brushed past him into the room, pushing their hair out of their face with a hand, checking the lines of the circle against their sketches.

“No, it’s quite alright, are you going to…?” Adamantine looked pointedly at the rat skeleton as Beck drifted around the room, fixing things and setting up.

“What?” Beck turned, looking at him, smoking herbs in hand. “Oh, reanimate the rat? Yeah. Dry run, something small and easy to take care of, if you get my drift. The cats are a lot of work, you know.” They turned back around, waving the smoke over the circle three times before placing the herbs in a dark green porcelain vase at their feet.

“I can imagine. Do you, uh, need help?” Adamantine realized that Beck was barefoot. “Oh, do you need me to take my shoes off?”

Beck barely glanced back at him over his shoulder. “I’d prefer it. Keeps outside variables out of the equation.” They fiddled with the controls of mirrors, lining them up perfectly. There were five of them, reflecting the rat skeleton into infinity and back.

Adamantine took off his shoes, resting them at the edge of the doorway. “Do you need help with anything?”

“Light the candles? The ones set up. Black and red.” Beck waved a hand at candles placed around the circle, causing bangles Adamantine hadn’t noticed to clink against each other, muffled by the dark fabric of their robe. “Matches should be on the tools table.”

“Tools table?” Adamantine looked around, and Beck pointed helpfully to the small messy desk covered in various tools, magical and non-magical. There was a pack of matches precariously perched on the edge of a straight razor. Adamantine grabbed it, opening the box and taking a matchstick.

“Oh, don’t use the matches themselves, there should be a striped candle in there? Use that. And count off one the candles, you should get to 15? If you don’t, we have a different problem.”

Adamantine found the candle, white and black striped, he noted, tossed on top of a bone saw. He lit it, and, counting each lit wick under his breath, made his way around the circle. As he finished, Beck was painting their face with some sort of dark black paste, based in ash or charcoal, Adamantine assumed. They had already painted and set their hands and arms up to the elbow and were examining their face in a different mirror, hung up on the wall, for any imperfections in the make-up. Adamantine watched as they brushed soot under their eyes expertly, drawing it down their face, across their cheeks to the line of their lower lip expertly, filling it in. Their top lip and skin had been paled to the same ghostly white shade, giving them an otherworldly appearance. They looked at him in the glass, and Adamantine realized just how grey Beck’s eyes were when there wasn’t the slight pink of their skin, the shades of warm black in their clothes, the cool tones in their hair to offset them. The color of rain on the wind and darkness in the noonday sky. Beck looked monochrome, and more than a little intimidating. They grabbed a length of cloth at their feet and threw it over the mirror.

Beck smiled, mouth seeming to split open on the line between black and white, and Adamantine felt all the warmth leave the room, sudden as thunder in the sky. He took a step back, and the ritual began in earnest. Beck nodded their thanks to him and picked up a smoking thurible, swinging it about themselves, chanting something in an oddly melodic language that Adamantine had no hope of knowing. It was soothing, in an unknowable way, much the same as infants are soothed by the incomprehensible lullabies of their mothers, sung to a crib of happily ignorant listeners.

They stepped into the circle, swinging the thurible around the edges. The smoke seemed to hang in mid-air, frozen where it has drifted out of the holes in the lid. The room seemed to chill, frost crawling over the windows, plunging the room into a soft blue light. Adamantine heard bells and tasted copper, realizing what was burning in the metal container that Beck was using to draw another spiraling symbol over the circle: myrrh, cypress, and wisteria. An odd mix, not that Adamantine knew enough about incense in necromantic rituals to judge. He wouldn’t use it as perfume, though, he knew that much.

As Beck finished the symbol, the mirrors began to rattle in their wooden frames, and the rat skeleton glowed with a dark light. It seemed to twitch and shift as Beck chanted, voice rising and falling. It shifted its head. Adamantine gasped, caught in the moment, and Beck took a red rope out of a pocket stitched inside their sleeve, tying a knot over the rat, and throwing it into the still smoking thurible. The rat twitched again and rose shakily to its feet, turning its head this way and that, getting a bearing of itself. Beck smiled and the room seemed to warm again. The smoke dissipated, falling to the ground, extinguishing the candles and the window cleared, letting the light of the setting sun into the room again, casting long golden shadows onto the floor. Beck pushed their hair out of their face again and opened the window, letting fresh air into the room. The rat wobbled around the circle, bumping into the protections keeping it in, skull bouncing off of the barrier. Adamantine took a step closer.

“Woah.” He stared at the rat.

“Oh yeah, it can be a bit of a rush to see for the first time.” Beck turned back to the rat, grabbing a notebook and a pen, scribbling in it.

The rat looked up towards the noise and barked. Beck frowned. The rat barked again, sniffing in Beck’s direction.

“Fuck.” They wrote more into the book. “Why is it a dog?”

“Is it not supposed to be?” Adamantine reached a hand out to touch the bone rat.

“Don’t touch it.” Adamantine retracted his hand quickly. “It’s supposed to be a dog. Better than last time, though. Hm. Okay. I used wisteria with #23, but that ended up being a racoon, and the last time it fucked up because I miscalculated the placing of the candles and didn’t animate at all… hm. And without wisteria, it summons a rat, but only if the candles are in position number 32. Okay. Oh, sorry I’m just talking at you. You were great help. Really.” Beck was staring at Adamantine, hand still writing in the notebook.

“Oh! It was no problem at all! I’d love to be of assistance any time.” Adamantine stood, almost awkwardly, backing to the doorway.

“You offering?” Beck had stopped writing, those intense grey eyes holding his, as if binding them to their bidding.

“Maybe I am?” Adamantine did his best to hold eye contact, banishing as much anxiety from his body as he could.

“Then I’m accepting. Wanna make yourself useful? Get the candles off of the floor before the wax hardens. It’s a bitch to get them off otherwise.” Beck put the notebook down on the tools desk, grabbing some dark sheets of cloth from the floor and dragging them into the circle.

Adamantine obliged, getting the candles up without too much trouble. While he did this, Beck draped the cloth over the mirrors, ensuring that there was no reflection. The rat sniffed at their ankles, excitedly trailing them, tangling itself in the cloth. Beck paused, removing it from the dark fabric, and covered the final mirror, taking care to check the corners. They lifted the the rat up in their hands, holding it by the scruff of its cervical vertebrae. Adamantine picked up the last candle and glanced at Beck for some place to put them. He saw Beck, holding the rat over a metal tough that had been previously covered by a length of cloth, close to the shelves with wooden boxes. He cleared his throat, getting Beck’s attention.

“Oh, those can go next to the tools desk. There should be a pile sorted by color. Just dump ‘em down, I can go through them later.” The rat scrabbled for purchase in their hand, claws scraping against the metal of the trough.

Adamantine found the pile easily, a decent amount of unlit candles stacked in neat rows, rainbow order, and set his own down. Behind him, he heard a sharp crack, and then the sound of small things falling into a metal dish. There must have been horror in his face as he whipped around, seeing Beck standing over the trough, rat in a pile of disorganized bones beneath them. Their expression was unfazed as they dusted their hands off, letting the vertebrae they held join the pile.

“Oh. Right. Probably should’ve warned you.” Beck looked as sheepish as one could wearing black robes, standing over the bones of a recently dead, undead, and redead rat.

“Is… is it dead? Again?” Adamantine searched for movement in the trough.

“Deader than it was.” Beck took a wooden box from the shelves on the wall and carefully placed all the bones inside. They ran a hand along the bottom of the trough to pick up any stragglers, coming up with an earbone and a tooth, placing those into the box as well.

“But why? You brought it back?”

“I brought a random dog back. It’s a test run, Adamantine. It wasn’t going to last a week. You can’t get attached to the little things you summon along the way. It wasn’t fully there, anyway. It just knew how to bark and walk. Couldn’t see, couldn’t hear, couldn’t feel.” They put the box back onto the shelf, label out. Adamantine saw that it read ‘Grey Rat. F. #24’.

“How can you tell? You brought _life_ back!”

Beck dusted off their robes and gave Adamantine a glare that would make crops wither. “I’ve brought back a lotta shit, illusion mage. I know what a sense-starved skeleton looks like, and I know how long something like _that_ is gonna last. So please.” They faced Adamantine, advancing, forcing Adamantine to back up. “Don’t tell me how to do my job.”

Adamantine’s back hit the doorframe and he stumbled through it. Beck passed him, gliding through their chambers. “I didn’t mean it like that…” Adamantine leaned his shoulder on the wall.

“Oh?” There was a tired interest in Beck’s voice, the manic energy abandoning them life smoke out of the open window.

“I just meant that what you do it really cool. And I would like to, uh, help you? And stuff? I don’t know if I’m squeamish about skeletons, though. It would make a good topic for my essays! Not a lot of people know enough about necros—sorry! Necromancy—”

They waved a hand. “I don’t give a shit what you call me.”

“Uh, okay, it feels rude, though. Sorry, uh, necromancy to feature it in essays, and it would really help me stand out, and I could learn more about magic and combining different schools and…” Adamantine let himself trail off, praying to anything that could hear that he didn’t sound like a kid begging his mother to delay his curfew.

Beck brushed aside a stack of papers and sat themselves on their desk. “Sure. I don’t mind help. Can’t pay you, though.”

“So, like an internship?”

“On the books or off?”

“Your choice.”

Beck grinned. “Clever boy. Fine by me. If you could find me a set of dog teeth, then that would be your first task. This is your unofficial and unsanctioned welcome to the team, the hours are shitty, and the work is weird as fuck. Hope you like it, even though you’re not legally on it.”

“Thank you so much! So, the work consists of, like, graveyards, right? I’d be looking for things in graveyards?”

“What?”

Adamantine rubbed the back of his neck picking at his skin. “For bones and teeth and stuff.”

“Who buries their dog in a graveyard? No? There’s a market for this shit. Near a graveyard, sure, but not _in_ the graveyard, well, except for Joey Moonsend but he’s a bit, um, odd. Let’s just say that. Has great spines, though. Don’t talk to him, you’ll know who he is.”

“So, I’ll be going to the graveyard market?”

“Yeah. You know where the Setting Sun Graveyard is?”

“Vaguely.”

“It’s in that general area on weekends from 2 AM to 11 AM.”

“Weird hours.”

“Weird work.” At Adamantine’s glare, Beck grinned almost sheepishly. “Middle of the night is prime market hours. Plus, I’m almost never awake in the afternoons, same with most other necros.”

“Unless you’ve got a problem in your magic.” Adamantine returned Beck’s smile.

Ankh meowed in agreement.

“You little traitor!” Beck cooed, scooping the cat into their arms, giving it a smooch on the head. Ankh purred quietly as Beck turned back to Adamantine. “Shit’s gotta be worked out. And plus, if I sleep, I’ll forget it.”

“Have you tried leaving notes?”

Beck reached over and pulled down a picture frame. Behind it, the wall was covered in pen scribbles in various ink colors. They put the picture frame back. “Yes. Yes, I did.”

“How about this. I’ll go the market for you and make sure you go to bed on time. And remember things for you. Sound good?”

“Sounds good. Right then. If it’s quite alright with you,” Beck placed Ankh into their lap and stretched, twisting their arms above their head and arching their back, yawning wide, “I am tired as shit and need to sleep.”

“I thought you slept after the coffee shop?”

“Oh, don’t be kidding. I had to set up!”

“How long have you been awake for?”

Beck counted on their fingers. “Uh… how many days is 70 or so hours?”

Adamantine’s face fell. “Too many. Go. Bed.”

“You’re really gonna fit in with the rest of the team.” Their grumble was almost lost in their words, said under their breath, facing Ankh. Ankh, for his part, meowed at Beck, scolding.

Adamantine stepped over to the door to the quarters while Beck crossed over to the door that was closed stepping directly into the path of Nebuchadnezzar. The cat immediately twined its skeletal form around Adamantine’s legs, doing its very best to procure pets or treats. Beck leaned on the handle, watching Adamantine try to extricate himself from the slightly spoiled kitty.

“Thanks again for the help. I’ll see you when I see you.”

Adamantine sighed. “It’s no problem. If you need me then drop by the illusion wing, alright?”

“Right as rain. Goodnight and sleep tight, my new accomplice.”

“It’s 6 pm.”

“They all end up on my sleep schedule eventually.”

“That was the most terrifying thing I’ve seen and heard all say. See you, Beck, please take care of yourself.” Adamantine opened the door and crossed the threshold before Beck spoke again.

“We’re working together. Call me Lies. And I absolutely will the fuck not.” They opened their own door and stepped in, closing it quietly behind them.

Ankh leapt down from the desk and padded over to the door, meowing at it. Adamantine chuckled and left, sliding the door shut with a quiet click. Inside the room, he heard Beck opening the door again and saying something to Ankh, Ankh replying, and Beck closing the door. Adamantine began the long walk down, lifting his eyes to the ceiling with a sigh. There was soot on the hem of his robes, and he smelled very strongly of myrrh.

“How the fuck,” his mouth dropped open in a near silent murmur, letting the goings-on of the building hide his words, “did my life come to this.”


	3. A Wolf Pelt is not a Shirt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lies has friends outside of Adamantine, and sometimes, those friends happen to be in town and request both a favor and a chat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 3 babey! I really love Dire as a character! Lets just say he and Lies go way back! Hope yall enjoy, and, as always, written and "edited" in the middle of the night.

Adamantine found himself in the grad student tower, despite his best intentions, taking in all the mages surrounding him as he bustled after Lies, holding a dark bag that was far heavier than it should have been, not that he knew what it contained. Ankh was riding high on Lies’s shoulders, enjoying watching the people passing them by. A new cat trailed after them, wagging its tail as he bounced along. Adamantine spared him a passing glance, tightening his grip on the bag and moving just a bit faster to keep up with Lies’s severe pace. People nodded at Lies as they passed, Lies returning their smiles, offering a few words in passing or a couple of quick hand signs. They looked over their shoulder back at Adamantine, pushing Ankh’s tail vertebrae out of their face.

“You okay? Make sure Horatio doesn’t get trampled.”

“Got it. Will do.”

Adamantine looked down at the cat, a ragdoll skeleton, if he remembered correctly, with some kind of dog inside. Lies thought it might’ve been a shepherd of some sort. Adamantine’s money was on corgi. He reached a hand down to it, clicking his teeth a couple times.

“Hey, Horatio, hey honey, get on up here!” He scooped the large cat-dog up in his arms, supporting the skeleton. Horatio barked happily, making the motions of licking Adamantine’s face with his non-existent tongue.

Adamantine shifted the skeleton in his arms, breaking into a trot to catch up to Lies. They turned their face to him, giving him a slight smile. The two of them walked for a few minutes more before Lies slowed slightly, stopping at an ornately carved door with the name ‘Dire Galeson’. They knocked twice before letting themselves in.

“You best be decent, Wolfboy!” Lies’s voice rang loud and clear from the doorway.

“As the day I was born!” A male voice, a herd of caribou running full throttle under a thunderstorm, answered.

“Not that promising!” Lies stepped in, letting Adamantine see the room.

It was big, as big as Lies’s would’ve felt, had books and miscellanea not been stacked on every available surface and the walls covered in diagrams and notes. No, this room was neat, or, well, compared to the Lies way of organizing things, which, being remember where everything is and damn anything lost to the paper stacks, never let the room sway from a chaotic whirlwind.

This room was certainly organized. The desk had piles papers, yes, but there was an order to them, broken up into several small stacks, fastened together with string into orderly bundles. The books, too, weren’t in disarray, sorted by title in alphabetical order, on topics ranging from wolf biology and pack behaviors to plant life in the far north. Quills, however, were strewn about the table. Countless ink stains, new and old, in a rainbow medley of colors, dotted the wooden surface.

Lies dropped their bag on the floor, leaning it on the side of the desk, taking off their shoes. They almost looked out of place, grinning wide, hair a wind-tossed mess, dark robes a size too big for them, against the wood-paneled walls displaying a wolf pack running across a frozen lake in pursuit of a warm meal. Lies opened their bag and retrieved a stack of papers, dropping in onto the desk with a thump. Adamantine leaned his own bag onto the desk as well, Horatio straining in his arms to be freed.

Adamantine obliged the cat-dog, and he landed on the ground, tail already wagging. He raced off, barking, through one of the two open doors across the room from them. Adamantine avoided peering into the one that led into the man’s, Dire’s personal chambers, familiar with the layout from Lies’s own quarters. Through the door leading to the casting area, however, there was a bright shaft of afternoon sunlight streaming in through the windows.

Lies passed through that door with the confidence of a rat given new life after seeing what rat-hell was well and truly like and wasn’t afraid to be sent to the fires of rat-damnation, to be killed and unkilled and rekilled, over and over, by rat-demons. Adamantine took off his own shoes, setting them against the wall, before following them. Lies let loose a happy scream, echoed in a much deeper voice, and, by the time Adamantine stepped through the doorway, was in a tight embrace with a man, presumably Dire, who was wearing a wolf skin like a cape, head in between its jaws.

Lies stepped back, about to introduce Adamantine, and Adamantine’s world stopped for a moment. He was deaf and blind to the goings on of the universe, mind violently ripped out of his body, limbs locked in place as he drifted, aimless, directionless, thoughtless. There was nothing but the cosmic expanse of nothing and Adamantine, no gods, no deities, no forces held way. It was just him and the uncaring, ceaseless apathy of the universe, casting him into the shadow of a thousand thousand suns, impossibly small, buried in the skin of his cheeks, demanding their red glow to be seen.

Dire was naked. Buck naked. Except for the wolf pelt. That didn’t help. Adamantine was violently slammed back into his body when Dire smiled at him wide. Adamantine’s heart seemed to skip a beat as he took in the man’s face, gentle dark brown eyes, unruly hair, just a few inches longer than Lies’s, colored a warm umber. He opened his mouth, and his voice was everything and more, the sun on Adamantine’s face, the path under his feet, the fruit hanging off of the trees, branches heavy with a soft sweetness, spreading across Adamantine’s tongue.

“I know Lies _just_ introduced me as Diedre, but they’re teasing. Call me Dire. Everyone does.” He gave a little breathy laugh and Adamantine mimicked it, trying to tear his eyes away from his face.

“I’m Adamantine.” His voice was held together with tape, composure kept to within an inch of its life.

Dire laughed again, and Adamantine was pinned to a corkboard with a needle through his midsection, wings fluttering weakly against the rough surface. “I heard Lies, I got it. How old are you, by the way? You don’t look young enough to be new?”

“25, 26 in the winter.” Horatio was at Adamantine’s feet, looking up at him happily.

Adamantine tilted his head, surprised. “You’re a year younger than me!” He turned to Lies. “You’re two years older than your right-hand man?”

“I’d rather have people with more life experience. And he’s not my right-hand man, he’s just a bit of help when I need it. Like what we do.” Lies absently ran their hand under Ankh’s chin, scratching the purring cat.

“Well, I _hope_ you don’t do with him what we do.” There was a playful glint in Dire’s eyes, lopsided smirk painting his face.

“Huh. I didn’t know we were so close in age.” Adamantine looked at Lies hard, studying their face.

It seemed younger in the shining light of their actual age, and older, in other regards. The white streak in their hair took on a more lighthearted, charismatic appearance, not the product of years of stress, but one of the impulsiveness of youth. The soft spark of moonshine they carried within them, glimmering through their face, from dark, clever eyes, was not one of pure youth, but that of a cheerful exuberance, a reluctance to adopt the mantle of seriousness that the rest of the adult world demanded adolescents shroud themselves in to enter into the dimension of taxes and land ownership.

Lies’s tone had a blade’s edge. “Yeah. Don’t rub it in.”

“I wouldn’t think of it!” Adamantine let his eyes shift to something, anything that wasn’t Lies’s too-clever-by-half eyes or Dire’s fully naked body.

“Anyway.” As Dire spoke, Adamantine noticed that there was a circle in the center of the room, and that there were the charred remains of leaves. “Thanks so much for stopping by! Let me just get myself sorted out and we can head out! I managed to get a few samples you might be interested, by the way. They’re in the beetles right now.”

Dire took a set of robes off of the floor, piles just outside of the burned plant remains. Adamantine politely turned away, affording Dire some privacy, contrary to Lies’s easy lean on a wall. The two of them kept talking idly, in terms Adamantine didn’t know well enough to follow. They seemed to have a productive conversation, though, drowned in slang and jargon, comparing results to similar experiments. Dire, as it seemed, had similar tasks as Lies, both of them focusing in the summoning of spirits or forms, some in guise, and others in substance. Life and death, the same side of the same coin, flipping through the air, always landing belly up in someone else’s palm.

“I’m decent, Adamantine.”

Dire’s sing-song voice snapped Adamantine out of his musings. He turned around, to find Dire’s expanse of olive skin put away, body hidden under the folds of his dark green robes, sleeves rolled up to his elbows. Adamantine noticed the tattoos on his hands, eyes having been drawn to… other places… earlier. They were intricate, branching winding rivers that swept their way up a tree truck on his arm. He could see stylized animals drawn within them, wolves chasing deer, owls and doves watching from the branches, fish swimming in the leaves, all done in a dark ink, not black, but almost blue green.

The wolf pelt hung on a hook on the wall, splayed out, fur neatened. There were shelves in this room, just as there were with Lies’s, except these were filled with woods of various types and sizes, from driftwood to mahogany. Dire stepped over the burn leaves on the ground, and Adamantine could see the window behind him, plants vying for space on the windowsill, straining to get more of the slightly-past-noon-day sunlight streaming in. Dire ruffled Lies’s hair, pressing a kiss to their temple. Lies’s mouth split into a wide smile, rivaling the sunshine.

“I’m surprised you’re up this early.” Dire gave a little smirk to Lies, who wrinkled their nose at him in mock irritation.

“I can be a very surprising person.” Lies produced an apple from behind their back.

Dire chuckled and accepted it, taking a bite. Around a full mouth, he managed to sneak out a mumble. “How’d you know I was going for a test run?”

“It’s the first thing you do in any new form. So? How was your flight, was it? As a hawk?” Lies got to work trying to sort Dire’s hair in any semblance of tame.

“Yeah, red-tailed hawk. It was… interesting. Hard to get the hang of, at first.” Dire bit into the core of the apple, intent on consuming the entirety of it. Adamantine blinked hard at that.

“But it went well?”

“I found some thermals and got a few good views; it’s definitely something I’ll try again.”

Lies gave up on Dire’s hair, ruffling it back into a chaotic mess. “Let me know! Oh, is Huntress joining us?”

“Unfortunately, no. She’s off on some errands. I take is Scathan is home?”

Lies hummed in assent.

Adamantine spoke up at this. “Huntress?”

“Oh!” Dire turned to face him, letting Lies mother him, fixing his clothes. “Huntress is my familiar! She’s a death’s head moth, so sweet.”

Lies glanced up.  “Yeah, she’s really nice. Soft, too.”

Dire reached down and pulled Lies’s hood over their face. “I love the robes, by the way, did you steal them from me?”

Lies shrugged, nonplussed. “Probably. They’re comfy. And soft.”

“They make you look like an infant.”

“It’s my youthful complexion and lust for life.” Lies threw their head back, hand to their forehead in a dramatic sweep, hood falling back down around their shoulders. They had finished up with the fabric and ensured that it draped as it should over Dire’s form. Not that Adamantine was complaining. “Should we head out?”

Dire nodded, and Adamantine picked up Horatio. They stepped out of the room, Dire closing the door behind them. They tugged on their shoes, and Adamantine shifted the cat skeleton in his arms to better support it. Lies picked up their bag, stopping Adamantine mid-motion with an urgent hum.

“Wait. Leave that. It has presents.” Adamantine’s hand retreated.

“Sorry, forgot.”

Dire beamed at him. “Not an issue! Thank you, Lies, I look forward to finding out what you’ve collected for me!”

In lieu of a response, Lies opened the door, holding it for the two fellows in the room. “Then you’ll just have to wait.” Their tone was almost a song, light and teasing.

Dire passed through, bopping his hand onto Lies’s head gently. Adamantine also exited and Lies shut the door behind them. Dire locked it, giving Lies a playful smirk. Lies drew their robes around them, pretending to be a courtly noblewoman sending signals at the cute servant boy at the ball, eliciting a complaining meow from Ankh as his perch shifted.

“Are we going to the usual place?” Dire took the lead, already knowing the answer.

“Where else?” Lies joined his side. “Adamantine, could you make sure Horatio stays inside the tower? Make sure Laudie knows, alright?”

“Oh, uh, sure thing!” Adamantine adjusted his arms as Horatio wriggled in his arms, seeking freedom.

“You can take the rest of the day for yourself, me and Dire are just gonna catch up, shoot the shit, you know? Nothing personal, it’s just probably not interesting to you. Recent rituals and political developments, nothing super fascinating.”

“Alright, thanks.” Adamantine did his very best to keep the disappointment from seeping into his tone. Even with all his efforts, though, a single drop fell and splattered on the floor, not subtle enough to be hidden, but not overt enough to be in jest.

If Lies noticed, they didn’t comment on it. From the quick flash in Dire’s eyes, though, he certainly did. In that moment, Adamantine saw the wolf, not the pelt, silver, black and red, chasing after something so much larger, but so much weaker. It made his blood run cold, even as it was replaced in less than a heartbeat with jovial amusement. Adamantine let himself fall back, watching the pair speak, Lies’s hands animated, supplementing their words with gesture and pantomime, Dire nodding along, adding his own ideas to the mix, watching Lies excitedly ramble about the various phenotypes of wisteria and how they affected the strength and effectiveness of the spell they were casting.

Adamantine parted from the group with a goodbye, Lies happily messing up his hair and Dire giving him a happy wave. Horatio barked his own farewell, and Lies leaned in, giving the cat-dog a smooch on the head and a few coos for the road. Dire gave him a scratch behind the cartilage that made up his ears. They turned away, Dire shooting finger crossbows at Laudie and Lies giving them a two fingered salute. They waved back, returning to their book. Adamantine approached as the two exited through the door, making sure it closed behind them.

“Hi, Laudie.” They looked up at him, mildly irritated to be interrupted.

“Adamantine, hello.”

“Um, Lies told me to tell you that Horatio is going to be free range? So make sure he doesn’t leave?” Adamantine held up the struggling skeleton cat as explanation.

Laudie reached out their arms, and Adamantine handed him over. “He’s the dog, right?”

Horatio welcomed the new human with ecstatic joy, licking at Laudie’s face with his transparent, intangible tongue. Laudie gave the bones a little smile, scratching it generously around his cheeks. They shifted their attention back to Adamantine.

“Sure thing. You leaving?”

“Yeah, I’m probably gonna go work on an essay I’ve been putting off.”

“Well, if you need any help, let me know. Plenty around here are living for distractions.” Laudie let Horatio escape their lap, wandering down a hallway, tail wagging.

“I—thanks. Really.” Adamantine arranged his surprised features into a warm smile. “I’ll keep it in mind.”

Laudie didn’t even look back at him. “Don’t do that. It’s creepy.”

Adamantine’s face returned to a more natural expression, a small smile, eyes cast to the desk. He could see Laudie’s book now, a heavy, dark blue tomb titled ‘Techniques on Scrying Utilizing Storm Water and Sea Glass’. They used their finger too keep their place in lieu of a bookmark, and it was somewhere halfway along the pages.

“Sorry. Ok. I’ll, uh, be heading out now.”

Laudie’s eyes met his. “See you soon.”

“See you.”

And with that, Adamantine left, somehow feeling far more exposed than when he entered, knowing far more about the anatomy and gender identity of Lies’s closest friends than he had ever wished to know. He also had some things to think about. Things regarding his previous lovers, to be viewed through a new lens. Hopefully. Stars he hoped he wouldn’t have to enter the questioning umbrella again.


	4. Happy Not-So-Happy Holidays

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After Lies goes AWOL for a moment, Adamantine decides to take up the mantle. Not that Lies wanted him to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had a lotta fun writing this chapter! Scathan is a Baby and I'm v excited to be working on the language of Durian with Awkward_Dragon (ty so much for this opportunity!), so do know that there will be a lot more vocab thrown in!

It was night the next time Adamantine returned to the coffee shop. Warm light poured out of the windows as Symph started to wind down for closing, putting chairs up onto the cleaned tables. Adamantine walked in through the door anyway, bell jingling out his presence.

“Hey, Symph.” He tried to drench his voice with as much normalcy as possible, throwing a winning smile into the mix.

Symph didn’t buy it. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s, uh, it’s nothing.” Adamantine’s fingers idly picked at his sleeve, teasing out loose threads.

“Doesn’t seem like nothing.” Symph sat herself down on the table she was cleaning, chimera padding its way into her lap.

Adamantine sat down in one of the unstacked chairs with a whoomph. “I just… it’s Lies.”

“When is it not?” Symph gently scratched the chimera along its spine. It let out a happy trill.

“No, not… I just…” Adamantine ran his hand through his hair, letting his head droop. “They’ve been really distant lately.”

“How so?”

“They haven’t been answering the door, and they haven’t returned my letters, and they haven’t spoken to me in a week! I thought we were friends!”

Symph’s expression eased into a forgiving sympathy. “It’s not you. Really. Lies… Lies gets like this around this time. They don’t like the solstice festival time.”

“But why?”

Adamantine jerked his head up when Symph sucked in her breath through her teeth. She bared them in equal parts a grimace and smile, eyes drifting down to the floor. “They... it’s not my story to tell, but they don’t have very nice experiences with it. You could _ask_ but I doubt they’d tell you any specifics. They haven’t told _me_ any specifics either. It’s just a thing.”

Adamantine’s eyebrows knit together. “So, they isolate themselves because they hate the solstice festival? That doesn’t seem healthy.”

“It probably isn’t.”

“Do they leave their office?”

“I think they’re at their house.” Symph regretted her words the instant she saw an idea take light in Adamantine’s eyes.

“I’ll visit them there, then. I wasn’t knocking at their house.” Adamantine gave Symph a determined grin.

She looked at him with both pity and skepticism. “Uh-huh.”

“No, really. They shouldn’t be miserable alone.”

“Do you even know where they live?”

Adamantine blinked. “I can find out.”

“Stars above, Addie.”

“This is a great idea.” Adamantine stood, already moving to the door. “See you later, Symph!”

“This is a horrible idea!” She called after him.

***

Adamantine found himself, almost miraculously, standing at the doorway of a small house. He could see that the structure itself was well maintained, and, despite the fact that it seemed… tired… in a way. It was still a nice, albeit small, place to live. The curtains were drawn, but he could see light filtering in through the windows. Taking a deep breath, Adamantine raised his hand and knocked on the smooth wooden door.

He didn’t expect the door to be answered by a man. He didn’t expect the man to have the lower half of a goat. Or curving ram’s horns framing the sides of his head, popping out of long, dark curls. He hardly noticed the comfortable black shirt that he wore, a size too big and far too long, draping down like a minidress, with a skull decal in white. Adamantine blinked at him, confused in every meaning of the word. The man tossed his head back, facing the house.

“Lizh-Lizh! You have a caller at the door!” His voice was languid, an odd accent running through his words, eerily reminiscent of sitting cross-legged on the fence between manic and exhausted in a way unlike anything Adamantine had heard before.

“My, uh, my name is Adamantine? I just wanted to check on Lies?” Adamantine found his words at the bottom of the paper bag he called a mind.

The man turned back to him. “Why?”

As Adamantine made eye contact, a drop of ice water entered his veins, quickly racing through his body. The man’s eyes had black sclerae and yellow irises, with no trace of a pupil. “I… uh… I was worried?”

“About what?” The man ran a hand through his hair, pushing it out of his face. Adamantine noticed it was healthy, though he couldn’t pick out minute details in the blackness of it all. He belatedly noted the complex tattoos adorning the man’s arm.

“I haven’t seen them recently.”

It was then that Lies’s voice echoed through the house, tinged with the same odd accent, though far, far fainter. “Scathan, who the fuck is at the door?”

“He calls himself Adamantine!” Adamantine couldn’t help seeing that, as Scathan spoke, the inside of his mouth, tongue and all, were pitch black.

Adamantine heard a groan and a flop, as if Lies had just given up on holding themselves up and chosen to lie on fabric. Scathan raised an unamused eyebrow at that, yelling something back in a language Adamantine felt like he should know the name of. He heard Lies shout back an answer, and Scathan moved aside, holding the door for him.

“As Lizh says, you may enter.” He didn’t seem all that happy about it. “They are in the common room.”

“Common room?” Adamantine passed the threshold, doing his best to give Scathan a respectful distance.

Scathan looked four seconds past rolling his eyes. “Walk down the main hallway, it is the second right. And do take off your shoes. We are a civilized household.” He motioned his arm in a graceful, elegant manner to a small bench, with shoes lined up neatly beside it.

“Oh! Sorry!” Adamantine obliged, placing his shoes next to a pair he assumed to be Lies’s.

He took these few seconds to take in the interior of the house. The walls were painted a light orange-yellow, warm and cheery, holding up framed pictures and art. In the foyer alone, there were painting of several cat skeletons. Adamantine recognized Nebuchadnezzar’s collar on one, and made an assumption that, in another painting, that the skeleton in Lies’s lap was Ankh. There were other cats, though, that he didn’t recognize. The floor was hardwood, with a large, dark red carpet containing a black, stylized rabbit in the center. Scathan cleared his throat, and Adamantine got up.

“Sorry, I’m going.” Scathan raised an eyebrow at that. “Thank you.”

Adamantine cleared his throat, quickly moving down the hall and into the doorway Scathan told him to. Inside, there was a fire burning in the hearth, many multicolored floor cushions, a table with chairs in the corner. In the heart of the cushion pile was Lies, reading a book, cats curled up around them, lying on their stomach. There was a dark blue blanket draped around their legs. They looked up at Adamantine.

“What.” There was no love lost.

Adamantine’s courage dried up like a freshwater catfish on a mountaintop. “I, uh, I was worried.”

“About what?”

“About you!”

“Why?” Ankh raised his head sleepily to look at Adamantine.

“Because I haven’t seen you in multiple days!”

Lies placed their book facedown in front of them, sitting up, much to the loud protests of Ankh and Nebuchadnezzar. “I think I’m allowed to have some time to myself, no?” There was a dare to their words.

“I mean, you are, I just thought you might like to be miserable with company?” Adamantine pulled a chair from the table and sat down.

Lies gave a sigh and stretched their arms above their head. Adamantine noticed their clothing, quite different from their usual attire. They were wearing a baggy, black short-sleeved shirt, and, covering their arms under it, was a dark red fabric, expertly wrapped around the length of their skin, stopping just above the wrist. Adamantine could see the same fabric wrap ending just under their neck. He cleared his throat a bit.

“Are you injured?”

Lies blinked at him. “What?”

Adamantine gestured to his own arms. “Are you alright?”

Lies looked down, frowning. “Oh! That. Yeah? It’s just the dye?”

“No, I mean, why are you wearing that?”

Lies drew their eyebrows together. “It’s winter. I’m gonna wear my undergarments in winter.”

“That’s an undershirt?”

“You’ve never seen that before?”

The two of them exchanged looks of pure confusion. Scathan took that silence to enter, two steaming mugs in his hands. He handed one to Lies, and, as he bent down, Adamantine could see a long, thin tail, tipped with a black tuft of fur, between his legs. Scathan lay down on the floor cushions, within arms-reach of Lies, yawning wide. Lies ran a hand through his hair affectionately.

“Thanks, Scathy-Catty.”

Scathan hummed in response, letting his eyes close. Lies continued to pet him, turning back to Adamantine. “So. You know how I’m from the far north?”

This was news to Adamantine. “You’re from the north?”

“I have an accent.” Lies said, with a very, very faint northern accent.

“Not to me. Well, I guess a little, but I couldn’t tell.”

Lies gave him a surprised smile. “Really? I’ve been working to get rid of it for years.”

“I just thought you were from the countryside or something.”

“Huh.” Lies said, very pleased. “No, I’m from way up there.”

“How far?”

Lies leaned back, resting on a pillow, crossing their legs in front of them. “Far north enough to have white nights and dark days. There are months in the summer when the sun never sets, just bounces around, from one corner of the sky to the other, over and over. It’s beautiful.” A smile touched their face as they remembered.

Scathan under their hand hummed in assent. “Nights are prettier, though.”

“Oh, fuck yes. The nights are so clear, you can see a million, million stars, like little eyes, looking down upon you, weaving the tapestry of your fate. And the aurora! It’s amazing, colors that you’ve never seen dancing in the sky like the melody of a long-forgotten song.”

“Honestly, it sounds a bit terrifying.” Adamantine picked at his sleeve. “The sun never setting one season, never rising the other? What if something happens? Do you just… wait until day?”

Scathan lifted his head to give Adamantine a tired look. “You go out and do it. Or repair it. Day will not come for another three weeks.”

“Oh. Okay.” Adamantine shifted his focus to Lies. “Is this your familiar?”

Lies pursed their lips. “Kind of?”

“How is something kind of your familiar?”

“He’s… special.” Lies smushed Scathan’s cheeks, causing him to stick out his tongue at them.

“’m a d’mon.” His words were distorted by Lies’s hands.

Adamantine turned this over in his head. “I’m sorry, what?”

Lies raised an eyebrow. “We have demons in the north. Similar function to familiars, but technically not one. Scathy-Catty’s a sloth demon.” They moved their hands from his cheeks to scratch at his nest of hair again.

“Speaking of my almighty laziness,” Scathan turned, letting Lies’s arm cover his eyes, taking care to avoid gouging them on his horns, “I think I shall have a nap for myself now.”

Lies gave a chuckle, rearranging the blanket to cover him. Scathan’s mouth opened wide, too wide, in a yawn, his tongue curling like a cat’s, before snapping shut with a click. His eyes closed, and his breathing slowed. Lies was watching him, affection subtlety woven into their features, hand circling dark curls, neatening the hair after having messed it up. They turned back to face Adamantine.

“So, uh,” Adamantine’s voice was hushed, trying not to wake Scathan up, “what are the winter celebrations like, up north, I mean.”

Lies’s face seemed to fall. “Similar to anything else, I guess. Gift giving, parties, food, family, the like.” Their own voice was quiet, though Scathan didn’t stir.

“Is it a big holiday?” Adamantine found himself shifting from the chair to a cushion on the floor, eye-level with Lies.

“The biggest of the year.”

“Do you miss it?”

Lies looked out the window. Snowflakes were falling against a dark treeline, lit by the lights inside. “I did.”

“You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”

“I know. I left in the winter. A week before the holidays.” Their fingers traced Scathan’s horn.

Adamantine found genuine sympathy bubbling up in his chest. “Have you been back?”

“Not a lot. It’s changed a lot, and I left for the enemy, anyway. Not the ideal way to bond with your community, eh?” Their face twisted into a smile at the end.

Adamantine gave a light chuckle. “I guess not. Why did you come down here?”

Lies gave him a look that suggested that he’d just asked the equivalent of whether or not they lived on land or in the clouds. “The education system is among the best. You can’t make a strong career in magic in Durian. It’s like being a cook or an artist. Here, on the other hand?” Lies raised their hand and laughed quietly. A snowflake materialized in their hand, a perfect example of illusion magic. “You can research just about anything.”

Adamantine gasped as the snowflake rotated, shifting into complex, knotted shapes as it turned. “That’s amazing! I didn’t know you knew illusion craft?”

Lies dispelled the image. “I don’t, not formally, anyway. Magic’s more common up there, it’s a household thing. Don’t get why y’all don’t teach your kids it, honestly. Speeds everything up, washing, cooking, healing.”

“It’s dangerous.” Lies gave a skeptical look at that. “And we just don’t. Cultural differences, I guess. Oh, I have a question.”

“And I may have an answer.”

“Why do you let people call you ‘Lies’?”

Lies tilted their head. “Well, it started because no one could correctly pronounce my name. Fully? It’s Peiqev’amn Lizhalive. Means Storm in the Mountains. The pronunciation was horribly butchered down here, so Beck A. Lyza it is.”

When they said their name, their voice was like music, expertly moving through vowels and tones, adding a quality to their words that Adamantine was altogether completely unfamiliar with. “Is that your native language?”

“I’d hope so. I only grew up speaking it.”

“What do you call it. In the language, I mean.”

“Tumazhaneva.” Lies said it with the same ease as breathing.

“Tumazhaneva.” Adamantine knew he butchered the vowels, but Lies’s face bloomed into joy, eyes lighting up with real, genuine happiness at hearing their language spoken. Adamantine felt his own face break into a smile.

“Your pronunciation is horrible.” Their words were said with affection.

“Touché. It’s nice to meet you, Peiqev’amn Lizhalive.”

“Peiqat’amn Lizhalaite. It’s in the vocative now.”

“Oh Stars.”

Lies tried to hold in their giggles, but they bubbled up, morphing into helpless, deep belly laughs. They doubled over, somehow not waking Scathan, shoulders shaking. There was happiness glowing in their eyes, a force stronger than the sun and moon combined, black and white hair thrown out of their face with a quick head tilt. Adamantine laughed with them, adoring how their giggles were soon interrupted by hiccups, only leading to more laughter. Adamantine drank in Lies’s smile. He wanted nothing more in the world for this moment to last.

**Author's Note:**

> Liked the tale? Send a message or leave a tip! I'd love to chat! https://timeslive-inhouse.tumblr.com/


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